Greenpeace's P&G protest raises security concerns

CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - Several zip-lining protesters were arrested after hanging banners from the Procter & Gamble towers on Tuesday afternoon. The ease in which protesters pulled off their stunt have many concerned with security.

Security officials say that the protesters gained illegal access to the building via a third party who shares the office space. Officials state that the individual let the Greenpeace activists in through a secured entrance.

"Security cameras indicate that one protestor gained illegal access to office space that P&G leases to a third party," said Lisa Popyk of P&G. "The protestor then improperly let the others in via a secured entrance."

Communicating by cellphone with a protester, police say the group had braces on the windows to keep them from opening.

"With the amount of property they brought into that building, the eight or nine pieces of luggage, that could have contained bombs if they were terrorists," said Capt. Broxterman.

Terrorism is one thing the Greater Cincinnati Fusion Center works to stop. Officials there say they're working with Procter & Gamble as one of their private sector partners to learn from Tuesday's incident. The plan now is to communicate yesterday's incident and information with more than 70 other Fusion Centers nationwide to help them plan and prepare for anything like this that could happen anywhere.

"It could have been horrific. We learn from this and we're fortunate that we're able to learn from it without having to deal with death and injury and destruction," said Capt. Michael Hartzler, director of the Greater Cincinnati Fusion Center.

The hope now is that the companies downtown take a look at their own security policies.

"They should all be reviewing their security policies today to say, 'Could this happen to us,'" Capt. Broxterman told FOX19.

Broxterman says city police headquarters has discussed bringing together security teams from downtown corporations to talk about security issues and how to fix them.